Truck regulations will die this summer if state doesn't act

John Berry / The Post-Standard, 2008New York State Trooper Mike Walser, from Troop D in Oneida, directs trucks on Genesee Street in Skaneateles as truck drivers stage a protest against regulations that would limit their use of smaller highways in the state in this photo from Nov. 28, 2008.
Ithaca, NY -- State transportation officials have until August to adopt draft regulations for large, long-haul trucks passing through the Finger Lakes or the regulations will end up on the trash heap.

“If there’s no action; if they’re not adopted” said Michael Weber, the governor’s assistant secretary for housing and infrastructure, the regulations will die.

Weber’s responsibilities for the Governor’s Office include the Department of Transportation. He met today in Ithaca with members of the Upstate Safety Task Force, a group that has worked for years to get the large trucks off local roadways.

Many of the trucks, the task force has said, are hauling garbage to the Seneca Meadows landfill in Seneca Falls. Members of the task force were shocked when they heard April 12 that the state would not implement the regulations.

Weber met today to talk about the status of the regulations and the effort to control truck traffic in the region. “The intent was not to yank, kill, table the regulations that day,” Weber said of the April 12 meeting. He faulted transportation officials for bad public relations for not being more specific about the fate of the regulations.

“The regulations are not off the table. … The governor’s table is bigger than theirs,” Weber said. “Anything they take off the table, we can put on.”

But having said that, he told members of the task force that since the draft regulations were published in the State Register in August 2009, if the regulations are not adopted by August, they die.

He did not know whether the August deadline could be extended because the 30-day public comment period on the regulations was extended for 60 days last year. He said he would find out.

Weber’s other message was that the state has worked with the landfill to include a clause in contracts with haulers restricting the trucks to the interstate system.

Weber said that by the end of this year, 80 percent of the trucks will be restricted to the interstate, and by 2011 all the trash trucks using Seneca Meadows will be limited to the interstates.